iPod iDead. iDrop, iRessurect. iHappy

We have a new (to us) car.  It is a very nice car, and it betters our old car in every way.  One way in which it betters our old car in is its ability to refrain from causing our iPod/iTrip FM transmitter to squeak and squawk and tune out at every inconvenient moment.  In our old car, I'd have to (acting as an antennae) constantly hold the iPod with iTrip in a very precise way, in a very precise part of the front seat in order for the thing to play.  Even then, there'd be infuriating buzzes and squelches interrupting the music a lot of the time.  Still, we got used to it.
Now, though, the iTrip works significantly better.  I don't have to hold it at all.  It can sit independent of human contact, and gives out (in comparison) wonderful FM transmission.
So, yeah, we were pretty happy.  Until this morning.
This morning, driving into town, happily listening to a Dolly Parton song on the iPod, it allofasudden freezes.  Hmm?  Nothing I do fixes it.  I try to reset it, but to no avail.  It's no-go.  Plus, the hard-drive is making "I'm broken" noises, and an image of a sad iPod appears on the screen, with the address of Apple iPod support.  Since it sounds so unhealthy, I suspect that the thing is toast.  I take the news pretty well, I find.  I go off to work, without the iPod, and don't fret about it until I get home.  I'm hoping that when I connect it to the computer, I can reformat the hard-drive and all will be well.  Even as I hope that, though, I'm thinking that the problem is more significant than that.  Still, hope upon hope.
I get home, plug the iPod into the computer.  It doesn't register as being connected.  All it does is whine and crack, like the hard-drive is spinning and broken and all I get is the sad faced iPod on the iPod's screen.  Going online to seek solutions proves unfruitful, and the only solution seems to be sending it away for repair.  I begin to debate whether or not it's worth the time and money.  I think it's not.  I begin to imagine my world without portable music and I get sad.
Then I remember seeing a page online somewhere, sometime ago where a guy talks about how he fixed his non-responsive iPod by dropping it.  Hmm?  I had pretty much convinced myself that the thing was now useless, and that I probably wouldn't send it off for repair.  So, I decide to be brave and drop it.  I hold it about chest high and let it fall to the linoleum, where it lands flat on its back.  I pick it up and try to reset it.  Nothing but the whirring, cracking hard-drive misfiring.  I am just about to put the thing down forever, and run out the door to a meeting I had, when I decide to drop it again.  This time so that it lands on the bottom corner edge.  I find it difficult to let it drop again, as I suspect it is ready to splinter into pieces and then it'll be truly garbage.
But drop it I do.  On its corner edge.  I pick it up, try to reset it, and it makes some new horrible sounds, blinks a couple of times and then, low and behold:  it works!
It works!  As if it was never broken.  Dropping it seems to have fixed it.
I drove to my meeting happily listening to great songs coming clearly through my new (to us) car's sound system.

Technorati Tags: iPod, repair